By Emily Wood
 
October 29, 2009
 
NEAR GRANTS PASS, Ore. - The United States Forest Service has begun to thin 5,800 acres in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
 
The U.S. Forest Service is contracting out work as part one of a two part thinning process.
 
"They're doing the first treatment in a series of treatments to try to help develop large trees in this area," said Don Bellville with the USFS.
 
Work crews are also thinning small trees as part of the USFS effort to reduce the threat of wildfire in the area.
 
"They cut material down. They will prune the conifer leaf trees up to eight or nine feet so that we don't have fire running up those bowls," Bellville said.
 
Bellville says 2002's Biscuit Fire, which burned nearly 500,000 acres mostly in the Kalmiopsis wilderness area, of the Siskiyou Forest, is an example of why thinning is necessary.
 
"The Biscuit Fire is a huge example of what we're trying to avoid in this area here... If we had a Biscuit Fire in the vicinity of Grants Pass, you can imagine the devastation that would occur... And this vegetation is similar to what burned in the Biscuit," Bellville said.
 
Once the vegetation is cut, crews create small manageable piles throughout the area. Once these piles are complete, the Forest Service will let them dry out during the winter and they will be burned next fall.
 
Meanwhile, protesters against logging old growth forests won an Oregon Court of Appeals ruling Wednesday that struck down a state law against interfering with agricultural operations.
 
The case grew out of arrests in March 2005 in the Siskiyou National Forest when protesters claimed old growth trees were being illegally logged as part of the timber salvage from the Biscuit Fire.
 
Josephine County sheriff's deputies arrested protesters who refused to leave when loggers arrived for work.
 
The appeals court said Wednesday the law didn't violate the state constitution. But it did violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution because it allows a protest over labor conditions but prohibits other protests.